CPJ

2013

For the second time this year, the U.N. Security Council took up the issue of protection of journalists. In a discussion today sponsored by the French and Guatemalan delegations, and open to NGOs, speaker after speaker and country after country hammered home the same essential facts: The vast majority of journalists murdered around the world are local reporters working in their own country, covering human rights, corruption, conflict and politics. In nine out of ten of these murders, no one is ever prosecuted.

Tags:

On Tuesday night, CPJ honored four courageous journalists
with the 2013 International Press Freedom Awards. The gala dinner, at New York's
Waldorf-Astoria hotel, raised more than $1.65 million for CPJ's worldwide press
freedom advocacy.

In December 2012, the Committee to Protect Journalists and 27partner organizations launched Speak Justice: Voices against Impunity as part of an international effort to seek justice for the hundreds of journalists who have been murdered around the world. Today, on International Day to End Impunity, we are taking a look back at what has happened over the last 12 months.

Tags:

Last week, as Egypt plunged deeper into political violence,
CPJ recorded a sad statistic: the death of the 1,000th
journalist in the line of duty since we began keeping records in 1992. While
that benchmark death came amid a military raid, seven out of 10 killed journalists
were in fact murdered in
reprisal for their work-- and the killers have evaded justice in almost all of
those cases, our research shows.

Tags:

Speaking at a U.N. Security Council discussion about the
protection of journalists, Associated Press Executive Editor and CPJ
Vice Chair Kathleen Carroll remembered the 31 AP journalists who have died
reporting the news and whose names grace the Wall of Honor that visitors pass
as they enter the agency's New York headquarters. Most were killed covering war,
from the Battle of the Little Big Horn to Vietnam to Iraq. But around the
world, Carroll
noted, "most journalists who die today are not caught in some
wartime crossfire, they are murdered just because of what they do. And those
murders are rarely ever solved; the killers rarely ever punished."

Tags:

In the past, donors and groups providing security to
journalists in less-developed nations tended to export a Western,
military-style of training designed for a war-time environment. But the danger of
covering combat is one thing. Being fired upon by a motorcycle-riding assassin
is another--as is being sexually
molested in a crowd, discovering a video camera in one's bedroom, or having
one's phone calls intercepted. And then there is emotional toll of losing
dear colleagues, and wondering whether you or your family will be next.

The two websites at the University of Texas at Austin, at
first blush, seemed to have been unlikely targets for attack. The Knight Center for Journalism in the
Americas and its blog
cover news about journalism, press freedom and journalist safety throughout the
Western hemisphere, with an emphasis on trends in Latin America. The website of
the International Symposium for
Online Journalism provides information about meetings and other professional
issues. Both websites were shut
down for two weeks last month in a targeted cyber-attack.

Back in 1981, when CPJ was being formed and its board of
directors assembled, Tony Lewis, who died today
at age 85, was one of the first people we approached. As the author of books such
as Gideon'sTrumpet, as a widely read columnist for The New York Times, and as an outspoken defender of press freedom,
he seemed a natural choice for the board. At the time, CPJ was an idea without
money, office, or staff, but Tony at once saw the value of such an organization
and signed on. His presence on CPJ's board and masthead helped give the
organization immediate credibility; his devoted participation was invaluable as
we expanded in size and mission over the next 30 years.

Tags:

Egyptian journalists, besieged by punitive lawsuits and
under threat, agree that under President Mohamed Morsi "there is no press freedom,
only the courage of journalists," as editor Ibrahim Eissa put it. What they
can't agree on is--in a climate of freewheeling, mutable media--who exactly is a
journalist?